Elemental Shaman DPS Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities (WoD 6.1)

On this page, we list your Elemental Shaman core
abilities and how they should be used together (rotation) in World of Warcraft
WoD 6.1. We also explain when
to use your various cooldowns. Then, we go deeper and present all the subtleties
that you will need to know if you want to excel at playing an Elemental
Shaman.

The other pages of our Elemental Shaman guide can be accessed
from the table of contents on the right.

About Our Reviewer

This guide has been reviewed and approved by Purge,
a prominent Shaman theorycrafter, who often contributes to the Elemental Shaman section of
Totem Spot.

If you chose Elemental Blast as your Tier 6 talent, then using it on cooldown
becomes your priority number 4, just after casting Earth Shock.

If you chose Unleashed Fury as your Tier 6 talent, then Unleash Flame
becomes part of your rotation and using it on cooldown is your number 1 priority.

See our Opening Sequence for instructions on
what to cast when the fight starts.

1.1. Tier 7 Talents

If you have chosen Liquid Magma as your Tier 7 talent, then using
it when you have 10 or more seconds remaining on your Fire Totem becomes
your top priority. If your priority allows it, refresh your Fire Totem before
using Liquid Magma.

If you have chosen Elemental Fusion as your Tier 7 talent, then
there is no change to apply to your rotation. Unlike Enhancement, Elemental
does not need to pool for Elemental Fusion charges for Flame Shock.

Ascendance is your main DPS cooldown. This ability
causes your Lava Burst to no longer have a cooldown and your
Chain Lightning to become Lava Beam, a more powerful AoE ability.
Ascendance has a 3-minute cooldown and should be used whenever it is available.
You can also save it to line it up with periods during which you deal increased
damage.

Thunderstorm is an AoE DPS cooldown, which you should
always use when you have 10 or more enemies to attack and.

If you have chosen Storm Elemental Totem as your Tier 7 talent,
then you gain a new cooldown. It should be prioritised over
Fire Elemental Totem, as it does more (or comparable, with Primal Elementalist)
damage and it does not lock you out of your other Fire Totem (Searing Totem).
Basically, you will want
to use Storm Elemental Totem on the pull, and then use Fire Elemental Totem,
when the 1-minute shared cooldown expires.

In addition, your talents grant you a number of other DPS and healing
cooldowns, as we explain in our additional
cooldowns section.

The advice provided above will enable you to play your Elemental Shaman very
efficiently. The main optimisations are regarding the management
of your charges of Lightning Shield. We detail them below. Other than
that, you might be interested in the various mechanics your class have.

5.1. Fulmination and Charges of Lightning Shield

Every damage event with Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning
and their multistrikes is guaranteed to generate one charge of Lightning Shield,
thanks to Fulmination. So, if you cast Lightning Bolt on a target
and are lucky enough to get 2 multistrikes, then you will generate 3 charges
of Lightning Shield. If you cast Chain Lightning and it hits 3 enemies, each
time with 2 multistrikes (you need to be very lucky), it will generate you 9
charges of Lightning Shield. So, you really need to keep a close eye on your
charges, because they can increase very rapidly, especially in
AoE situations, and they never drop, unless
you use Earth Shock. Damage done by Mastery: Molten Earth
(your mastery) does not grant additional charges of Lightning Shield.

In an ideal world, you would always use Earth Shock when you have
20 charges of Lightning Shield, for maximum Fulmination.
Unfortunately, things are not so easy. When you score a multistrike with
Lightning Bolt, there is a slight delay before you are granted your
additional charge of Lightning Shield. So, if you are at 18 charges, there
is a chance that your next Lightning Bolt will multistrike twice and
generate a total of 3 charges and one of them will be wasted. This is
why we have this 17-charge safe limit, at which it is advised
to always cast Earth Shock.

Earth Shock and Flame Shock share a cooldown, but
this is usually not an issue. If you refresh Flame Shock when it has 9 seconds
or less remaining, then you do not lose any tick, so this gives you a
large time window during which you can decide if you are going to spend
your charges of Lightning Shield first and then refresh Flame Shock, or
if you are going to do it the other way around.

Flame Shock ticks every 3 seconds, which means that you have 3
seconds (or less, depending on your haste) to make use of a proc of
Lava Surge before running the risk to
see it wasted by a new proc of Lava Surge. To prevent wasting procs of
Lava Surge, you should always cast Lava Burst as soon as its
cooldown is reset.

You can refresh Flame Shock when it has 9 seconds or less remaining.
In this case, whatever duration was left when you refresh it is added to the
duration of the new Flame Shock DoT. So, if you refresh Flame Shock with 5
seconds remaining, the new DoT will have a duration of 35 seconds.

5.4.2. Tier 1 Talents

Your Tier 1 of talents gives you access to 2 additional defensive cooldowns
that are mutually exclusive: Stone Bulwark Totem and Astral Shift.
Simply use them whenever needed, following the guidelines we gave in
the talents page.

Reinforce reduces the damage you take
by 20%. As your Earth Elemental does not do much damage, you
should never hesitate to let it channel Reinforce if you
are taking damage.

Empower increases the damage you do by
5%. Your Fire Elemental does a significant amount of damage and,
in the general case, increasing your damage by 5% does not
make up for the damage your Fire Elemental is not doing while
channeling. If you are in a situation where 5% of your damage
represents a larger amount than the damage your Fire Elemental
deals, then it is beneficial to let your Elemental channel
Empower.

Both channels also increase the healing you do by 10%, but this
will rarely affect your decision as to whether you should let
your Elemental channel.

05 Jan. 2015: Removed Earthquake from the single-target rotation.
It sometimes is a DPS gain to use it, but the conditions for it to happen
are so complex that it is better and less confusing to simply leave
Earthquake out of the single-target rotation. Curious readers can take a
look at the conditions for casting Earthquake in the
Elemental
Shaman profile of Simulation Craft.